Kamchatka

Kamchatka, also spelled Kamčatka, kray (territory), far eastern Russia. The territory was created in 2007 when the Kamchatka oblast (region) was merged with the Koryakautonomousokrug (district). The territory includes the entire Kamchatka Peninsula and the southern end of the Koryak Mountains. The administrative centre is Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky. The population, averaging only 2.3 persons per square mile (0.9 per square km), consists chiefly of Russian settlers. The Koryak of the north constitute the main indigenous group; smaller groups include the Evens, Chukchi, and Itelmen (Kamchadal). Fishing dominates the economy and includes large-scale crab fishing and canning. Some timber is cut in the Kamchatka River valley, in which the only small patches of agriculture occur. The first geothermal electric-power station in Russia was built in the Kamchatka region. Area 182,400 square miles (472,300 square km). Pop. (2010 prelim.) 321,800.

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peninsula in far eastern Russia, lying between the Sea of Okhotsk on the west and the Pacific Ocean and Bering Sea on the east. It is about 750 miles (1,200 km) long north-south and about 300 miles (480 km) across at its widest; its area is approximately 140,000 square miles (370,000 square km)....

port and administrative centre of Kamchatka kray (territory), far eastern Russia. It lies along the landlocked Avachinskaya Gulf, on the Pacific coast of the Kamchatka Peninsula. The city was founded in 1740 during Vitus Bering’s second Kamchatka expedition. In 1854, during the Crimean War,...

indigenous people of the Russian Far East, numbering about 7,900 in the late 20th century and living mostly in the Koryak autonomous okrug (district) of the northern Kamchatka Peninsula. The Koryak languages belong to the Luorawetlan language family of the Paleosiberian group.